The termator gene has it's place. Contorling volenter crops is one and
protecting intlectelual propety is a legtiment use. Cosider cotton in India.
To protect the BT genetics and all other genetics in India they use hybred
cotton. No place else in the world uses hybred cotton. In the case of BT
cotton in India the hybridization is done by hand. Each bloom must be
emasulated by hand and covered with a bag and then a few days later the bag
much be reomved and the flower fertized by hand. Each bloom produces 4 or 5
seeds. It takes at least 20 or 30 seconds for each bloom and if the BT
cotton doubles the yeild of Indain cotton it takes about 8,000 seeds to make
a 480 pound bale of cotton or 1600 blooms or about 2.5 hours of hand labor
to produce the seed.

The breeders are going to protect their investment or not make it. Is it
better for the farmer to pay for 2.5 hours of labor to hybidize the seed so
he can't replant it or for the breeder to use a less expensive technology to
protect his investment.

I was farming before the plant protecton laws went in to effect in the US
and the progress in cotton move at a snails pace. One man would work with
one variaty all his life. With the plant protection act there was suddenly a
lot of new cotton to choose from. You don't get improved varities for free.
Someone has to pay for the work to develop them. All the goverments but
China have paractialy quit funding ag research so do you want to just quit
developing new varities?

More things will come with time but the big things come first. The boll worm
and it relitives are the number one pest in the world and the BT protien a
natural protien that kills them. Round Up resistance was easy to do and has
allowed millons of acres to reverse the loss of organic matter in the soil
for the first time in crops like cotton and soybean. When used for notil
cropping it is the biggest step in stopping soil erosion in my life.

What has already been done is the biggest postive step in imporoveing
framings impact on the envionment in history and you bitch about it?

Gordon

Gordon

"jitney" wrote in message
om...
Instead of screwing the world's poor with nightmares like the
"Terminator Gene," wouldn't it be great if the biotech firms could
come up with things like:
1) Splice together the bottom of a carrot and the top of a
cabbage.
2) Join together salt marsh plants with rice.
These two would go a long way to relieve world hunger. Then for
disease:
3) Develop a virus that attacks cancer cells.
4) Develop other viruses that attack infectous bacteria.

No, I'm not some kind of Pollyanna, I'm usually very cynical.And some
of these ideas may be naive, I am not a biologist. But I wanted to
offer people something nice to think about for Christmas. Have a merry
one, and feel free to add to the list.